


faith, hope, and pancakes

by The_Eclectic_Bookworm



Series: lucky you’re the one i love [12]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 07:39:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18774217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Eclectic_Bookworm/pseuds/The_Eclectic_Bookworm
Summary: The girl grinned, grabbing Faith’s hand like they’d been best friends forever. “You,” she said, “must be Faith. I’m Jenny.”





	faith, hope, and pancakes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackalopingIntoTheVoid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackalopingIntoTheVoid/gifts).



“This band is shit!” Faith shouted to Buffy.

Buffy frowned, but she didn’t look upset—more like she couldn’t quite hear Faith over the shitty, too-loud music. Faith couldn’t hear what she said back, but it looked a lot like _what?_

“THIS BAND IS SHIT!” Faith yelled, loud enough for Buffy _and_ the band to hear her. The dude on guitar gave Faith this coolly unbothered look, flipped back his hair like he thought he was a rock star, deliberately played the wrong chord, and kept going.

Next to Buffy, a dark-haired chick wearing a _Wretched_ t-shirt and an oversized leather jacket gave Faith a thumbs-up. This struck Faith as a little odd; she shimmied over to the girl. “You’re wearing their _shirt,”_ she said loudly, “and you think they’re a shitty band?”

“Don’t hold me responsible for my terrible taste,” the girl shouted back. “I’m in love.”

“With one of _them?”_

The girl grinned, grabbing Faith’s hand like they’d been best friends forever. “You,” she said, “must be Faith. I’m Jenny.”

Faith recognized the name very vaguely. Buffy had been rattling off a list of friends ever since Faith had shown up in Sunnydale yesterday. Willow the witch, Dawn the little sister, Jenny the—what exactly _was_ Jenny’s deal, anyway? “You friends with Buffy?” she asked; they were now dancing close enough that she didn’t have to yell.

“Yeah, we went to the same high school,” Jenny answered, twirling Faith and accidentally knocking them both into a closely-entwined couple. “Jesus, get a _room!”_ she called over her shoulder. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” said Faith, trying to be nonchalant about it. “Just got here from Boston. Council says I’m too wild to be tamed, so they sent me here.”

“You’re the—”

“New Slayer, I guess,” said Faith. “What happened to the old one?”

“Kendra flatlined when she got her throat cut, but she’s doing pretty good now,” said Jenny, pulling Faith in close, using their proximity to help them carry on a conversation. “She’s recovering back in Jamaica. She sends us lots of postcards. How’s the Slayer gig treating you?”

Faith didn’t want to answer that. “Which one’s yours?” she asked, jerking her head towards the stage.

“Hold up, I’ll show you,” said Jenny, and pulled away before Faith could ask her what the fuck that meant. Weaving up to the front of the stage, she stopped expectantly in front of the guy playing guitar.

The guy _grinned,_ then extended a hand, pulling Jenny onto the stage and into his arms with the practiced ease of someone who had done this a thousand and one times before. Sandwiching her between himself and the guitar and kissing the top of her head, he expertly finished the last of the song, then launched into a new one—still edgy and kinda terrible, but the lyrics were suddenly dorky as _shit._

Jenny, Faith suddenly remembered. Jenny, _Ripper’s_ girlfriend.

“Wait,” said Faith. “ _Wait._ ” She fought her way back through the crowd, then grabbed Buffy’s elbow, pulling her close enough to hiss, “B, is that your _Watcher_ playing guitar?”

“Yep,” said Buffy, grinning.

“Why’s he so _young?”_

“The Council thought I was a lost cause,” said Buffy proudly, “so they sent another one.” She snapped a picture of Ripper and Jenny onstage. “Gotta post this one to the band’s Instagram,” she explained. “I’m kinda their publicist now, and all the Wretch-Heads always lose their shit over Ripper getting snuggly with his honey onstage.”

“Wretch-Heads?” said Faith, and gagged.

“We need to call them _something!”_ Buffy objected. “And Ripper wouldn’t let me call fans Wretchamacallits—”

“For good fuckin’ reason.”

“Which one of us is the publicist?” Buffy ran a hand through her hair, continuing to shimmy to the beat. “Their set’s done in a few minutes and then we’re all heading to Ripper’s for movie night. You wanna come?”

“Sure,” said Faith, shrugging and doing her best to look cool about it. “Not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

* * *

 

Ripper, as it turned out, was surprisingly cool for a guy who couldn’t play guitar for shit. He knew how to do eyeliner, he had a sickass tattoo, and when he found out Faith was the Vampire Slayer, he immediately asked her to punch him in the face. “Buffy did it once by accident,” he said, “and I wanna know if Slayer-strength is the same for both of you, or—”

“Buffy barely grazed him and he got concussed,” said Jenny. “Do not hit him. He’s a fragile little flower.”

“I’ll fragile _you,”_ Ripper growled, picking Jenny up and attempting to toss her onto the sofa. She shrieked, laughing, and accidentally elbowed him in the face; he toppled to the ground and she fell on top of him. “ _Ow!_ Janna, what the _fuck?”_

“They’re really dumb,” Xander informed Faith.

“You get used to it,” Willow added.

Jenny untangled herself from her boyfriend, squeezing herself in between Willow and Faith on the sofa. “So, Faith,” she said. “You totally have to tell me all about Slayer life in Boston. What’s it like?”

Faith didn’t want to talk about Slayer life in Boston. “Boring enough that I decided to try it here,” she said. “You guys get, what, five vamps a week?”

“Ten,” said Xander from the easy chair. “Ideally.”

“One time Jenny tripped a vampire into a tree branch by accident!” said Buffy. “It was the funniestthing I’ve ever seen—”

“It was a _tactical maneuver,”_ said Jenny, flipping her hair and glaring at Buffy. The glare only lasted a second. “Mostly.”

“Shit, Jen, I gotta hear some of your patrol stories,” said Faith, grinning. “I’m used to just punching the vamps till they fall on something sharp.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the Slayer experience,” Buffy agreed.

“Patrol stories,” said Ripper from the floor, “can wait until movie night’s done. Budge up.” He hopped up from the floor, considered, and settled himself on Jenny’s lap, leaning back into her and giving her a winning grin.

“Jesus, you’re heavy,” said Jenny, messing with his hair. “Buffy, can you—”

“On it,” said Buffy, and started up Netflix. “Hey, Faith, do you have a place to stay while you’re in town?”

The question took Faith by surprise. “Uh,” she said. “Motel, probably.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit,” said Jenny. “You’re staying with me. Ripper, you can’t stay over tonight, I need to make sure Faith’s set up and you’re always a distraction—”

“Am not,” said Ripper, and turned on Jenny’s lap to start kissing her.

“NO MAKEOUTS DURING MOVIE NIGHT,” shouted Buffy and Xander at the same time, the latter punctuating his statement by throwing a handful of popcorn at Ripper and Jenny.

Jenny pushed Ripper off her lap. He toppled to the floor, pulling himself up to lean against her legs. “See, this is my _point,”_ she said, “you are _totally_ an inconvenient distraction, and I want to make sure I get to know Faith! She thinks your band is shitty too, so she’s pretty much already my best friend.”

“Janna,” said Ripper, “you know the words to _every single one of my band’s songs._ ”

As Faith and Xander started laughing, Jenny said very loudly, “Buffy, why don’t you start the movie?”

“No, I wanna hear more about you knowing all of Wretched’s songs!” said Buffy, grinning broadly. “You’re probably the biggest Wretch-Head there is—”

“Buffy, please stop fucking calling it that,” said Ripper.

“ _Which_ one of us is the publicist?” said Buffy, and started up the movie. It was something surprisingly action-y for a room full of mostly girls, Faith thought; she’d always kinda imagined girls watching chick flicks when they got together. Mostly this was because she’d never really been in a room full of mostly girls and popcorn and sleeping bags—though she guessed she’d also never been in a room with another Slayer. Lot of firsts today.

Next to her, Jenny nudged her shoulder a little. Quietly, she said, “After movie night, you wanna sneak out and get a midnight snack? I never like going straight home.”

“Aren’t there vamps?” Faith whispered back.

“Don’t worry,” said Jenny, patting her shoulder. “I’ll totally protect you.”

Faith tried to pretend she didn’t like the way that sounded.

* * *

Jenny was twenty years old, long gone from high school and rocking the college lifestyle. She lived in a cheap apartment a handful of blocks away from Ripper’s, but Sunnydale was a small enough town that pretty much everything was a handful of blocks away from everything. Her fridge was stocked with two half-empty bottles of soda, a single hard-boiled egg, and a half-eaten cupcake, and she was possibly the coolest fucking person Faith had ever met. Not, of course, that Faith would let Jenny know this, because if you were cool and you thought somebody else was cool, the _least_ cool thing to do was tell them. Obviously.

They’d bought a shitton of junk food at the nearby corner store, and stayed up late eating candy bars and chips, sitting sprawled on Jenny’s bed. “Ripper,” said Jenny, “is gonna legit murder me if he finds out I’m eating like this.”

“He’s not your fuckin’ keeper, is he?”

Jenny rolled her eyes a little, but there was a touch of pleased affection when she spoke next. “He really cares about me,” she said. “He always gets fussy if I’m not eating actual human food.”

“Doesn’t that get annoying?”

Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think it ever will,” she said. “You spend years with no one caring what the hell you do, let alone whether you’re taking care of yourself, and suddenly…” She trailed off. “He’s really amazing,” she said.

“Even if he can’t play for shit,” said Faith, and took a big bite of the Snickers bar she was eating.

“Oh, he can play,” said Jenny. “He just likes being really loud onstage.” She smiled slightly. “You should hear some of the songs he plays for me when—well, no one really gets to hear those but me. He says he doesn’t want people thinking he’s going soft.”

“With B as his publicist?” Faith snorted. “She’s got a whole-ass Instagram for pictures of you guys snuggling onstage.”

“I’m super hot,” said Jenny. “Any good publicist takes pictures of the rock star groping a super hot groupie. It’s good for his bad-boy image.”

Faith considered the way Ripper had kissed the top of Jenny’s head onstage and had to bite back a laugh. No one in the world would call that _groping_. “How’d he end up in Sunnydale?” she asked.

“It’s kind of a long story,” said Jenny. “What about you?”

“Huh?”

“How did _you_ end up in Sunnydale?”

Faith blanched. She hadn’t been expecting Jenny to ask her again. “I told you, remember?” she said. “The Council sent—”

“If you don’t wanna tell me, you don’t have to,” said Jenny, leaning back against the headboard. “But you don’t seem like the kind of girl who’d go anywhere she wasn’t interested in going.”

That was kind of true, and even with the total fucked-up-ness of her life, Faith couldn’t help but feel pleased that Jenny had recognized this in her. “I didn’t really have a place I wanted to go,” she said, which was sort of the truth. “Figured Sunnydale was as good a place as any. My Watcher used to—” She swallowed. “Uh. My Watcher sometimes mentioned that California had a Vampire Slayer who was too tough to stay dead, so I figured I could learn a trick or two from her if I headed in that direction.”

Jenny nodded thoughtfully. “Makes a lot more sense than you being the Council’s lapdog,” she said, taking a sour-cream-and-onion chip and tossing it into her mouth. Crunching, she added, “At some point, I’m gonna fly down to England and punch one of those losers in the face.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that vibe,” said Faith. She considered. “Look, I know why _I’m_ not that keen on the Council—” a lot of it, she privately added, was because none of them had given a shit when a vampire had killed her Watcher, “—but why aren’t _you?”_

Jenny was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “It’s more Rupert’s story than mine, to be honest, but he was raised to be a Watcher and it ended up really fucking him up.”

“Oh,” said Faith. She thought of Ripper and his easy grin, and something twisted in her when she tried to place that guy in the same room as all those impersonal tweed-clad assholes. “Huh.”

“They take these _kids,_ ” said Jenny. “They take _children,_ and they give them destinies. Were you raised by the Council?”

Secretly, Faith had always kind of wished that she had been. She couldn’t see it being any worse than the shit with her mom. But that wasn’t something she wanted to tell Jenny—or _anyone—_ so she just said, “No.”

“Good,” said Jenny savagely, and took a violent bite of the potato chip.

Faith focused in on the last of the Snickers bar, feeling strangely uneasy. The first day in a new town was always the hardest, but harder still was the fact that she’d reached her destination. It had been easy to like the people in other towns; caring about them hadn’t mattered, because she’d known that she wouldn’t be thinking about them once she’d reached Sunnydale. But now she was _in_ Sunnydale, with a hot Slayer and a bunch of the Slayer’s cool friends, and things felt—they felt too _easy,_ after all that fighting to get here.

“Hey,” said Jenny suddenly, her tone softening. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” said Faith, determined to make it true by willpower alone. “Thanks for letting me stay here.”

“No big,” said Jenny, grinning a little. “I’ve got space. Might as well put it to good use.”

Faith smiled back and popped the rest of the chocolate into her mouth.

* * *

 

Ripper came over early the next morning with a brimming-over bag of groceries, slipping in while Faith was still crashed on the couch. She woke up to something that smelled _really_ good, and peered over towards the kitchen to see Ripper flipping pancakes.

Sitting up, Faith pulled herself off the couch, crossing the living room to enter the kitchenette and swing herself up onto the counter. “Jenny know you’re here?” she asked.

“Jenny would’ve given you that hard-boiled egg and called it breakfast,” said Ripper, rolling his eyes a little. “Or she’d have _split_ it with you. Trust me. This works better for everyone.”

Faith tried to reconcile the too-cool guitarist with the soft, rumpled-looking guy wearing a mismatched set of pajamas and cooking his girlfriend pancakes. His sleeves were rolled up, his tattoo still visible, but he looked a whole lot gentler in the morning. Less full of vicious energy. It was weird. “When are pancakes gonna be done?” she asked.

“In a _minute,_ ” said Ripper. “Jesus. I can see why Jenny likes you.”

Faith did her best to pretend that that didn’t make her grin.

Jenny entered the kitchenette, still wearing her oversized _Wretched_ shirt, long hair hopelessly tangled and eyeliner hopelessly smudged. Ripper bit his lip and grinned, looking at her, and she smiled back, stepping over to watch him flip another pancake. “I want a weird shape for mine,” she said, wrapping her arms around his stomach from behind.

Ripper leaned back into her. “I’m making fuckin’ circles,” he said. “Deal with it.”

“Conformist.” Jenny kissed him on the cheek. “How’d you sleep, Faith?”

“Okay,” said Faith, watching the both of them and feeling...like she _should_ feel like she was intruding, or something. She didn’t. “You guys mind if I hang with you for…” She trailed off, uncertain. She wasn’t actually sure how long she intended to be staying.

“I’ve got the space,” said Jenny, giving Faith a small, encouraging smile. “Stay as long as you like. Seriously.”

Faith wasn’t sure how she felt about _that_ either, and decided not to examine it. “So what are you guys doing today?” she asked.

“No fucking clue,” said Ripper happily.

“Yeah, that’s most of our days,” said Jenny, grinning a little. “We’re probably going to go over to Buffy’s and play board games or something, and then someone goes with Buffy on patrol. We’re not very interesting people.”

And it was _so_ goddamn weird, but somehow that just made Jenny seem _cooler_ to Faith. She’d been around a ton of posers and wannabes who smashed shit up around town just because they wanted to _look_ like they didn’t care what people thought of them, but Jenny really _didn’t_ care what people thought of her. She could party hard and keep it lowkey.

Faith liked that.

“You guys seem kind of okay to me,” she said.

“Oh, not Jenny,” said Ripper, grinning over his shoulder at his girlfriend. “Jenny’s the fucking worst. Good luck living with _her_ on a daily basis, Faith, she _never_ goes shopping—”

“Why would I go shopping when I have an on-call delivery system?” said Jenny, turning Ripper around to grin up at him.

“Fuck off,” said Ripper, and kissed her. He stepped back, then added, “And those pancakes’ll get cold if you don’t eat them, Faith!”

“Huh?” Faith suddenly noticed that there were _three_ plates of pancakes, each with fruit and whipped cream and maple syrup. She took one, feeling weirdly like crying, which was _dumb,_ because not having a home-cooked breakfast since the Prof—that  _so_ wasn’t something to cry about. “Thanks,” she said, letting her hair fall in front of her face, giving herself a few seconds— _one, two, three—_ before trusting that she wouldn’t cry when she looked up.

“See, Janna?” said Ripper. _“Manners.”_

“Shut the fuck up,” said Jenny, and took one of the other plates.

* * *

 

Going patrolling with Buffy was unlike anything Faith had ever experienced. She was used to going with her Watcher, who couldn’t keep pace and who usually watched from a distance. But Buffy could match her punches in both speed and strength, and move just as quickly as Faith through a cemetery, and when Faith watched Buffy drive a stake home, she felt a sense of proud recognition. Her Watcher had always referred to Buffy as Faith’s _sister Slayer,_ but Faith kinda thought of Buffy as—

Well. Definitely nothing close to a sister.

“That’s seven to your nine!” Buffy crowed, dusting the remnants of the latest vamp off her jeggings. “I’m catching up!”

“Big fuckin’ whoop, B, I’m still two ahead,” Faith shot back with a grin, tossing her hair in the practiced way she used to get boys to give her drink money. She noticed with satisfaction that Buffy turned a warm shade of pink. “Hey,” she added, stepping forward. “Is now the time to ask if you’re seeing anyone?”

“Oh, I-I had a boyfriend,” said Buffy, “but he’s—he’s kinda figuring stuff out up in LA now. Totally and completely out of the picture,” she added, looking up at Faith through her lashes.

“Cool,” said Faith, hoping like hell she wasn’t blushing. Girls as pretty as B made it _really_ hard to be her usual easy-breezy self.

“You know, Sunnydale High has a GSA,” Buffy said, overly casual. “I’m their resident B.”

“For Buffy?”

“For _bisexual,”_ said Buffy, visibly biting back a giggle. “But Buffy works fine too.”

Sunnydale, Faith thought, was _definitely_ shaping up to be a pretty cool place.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is just so y'all know for Certain that faith is in the au. she's doing great. she's dating buffy and playing lots of video games over at jenny's place.


End file.
